The 1900 block of S. Broad Street has a long history of serving the medical needs of South Philadelphia. Saint Agnes Hospital opened here in 1879, at one point taking up an entire city block. The original hospital building was demoed in the early 1970s and was replaced by a mix of medical buildings currently known Constitution Health Plaza. Needless to say, the newer building pales in comparison to its predecessor.

At the corner of Broad & Mifflin sits a two-story commercial building that has had some medical tenants over the course of its history, but has been sitting vacant for several years. In 2022, plans came down the pike to demolish this building at 1900 S Broad St. and replace it with a five-story medical building. This certainly made sense, given the medical center immediately next door.

The project never came to pass despite its inherent sensibility, and that two-story building is still hanging around. But maybe not for long. At a South Broad Street Neighborhood Association meeting this week, we learned that the development team is now proposing a mixed-use project with 41 apartments above ground floor retail for this location. The new project is dimensionally similar to the old one, with the same height, lot coverage, and 12 car ground floor parking garage accessible off Mifflin Street. The new proposal takes a bit of a different architectural approach, with more brick veneer taking this project in a decidedly less commercial direction. Thanks to renderings from LRK we can see the new building includes a shared roof deck that should have some pretty impressive views of Center City. The next time the Eagles win the Super Bowl, we know where we want to watch the parade.

While most of the building will be dedicated to housing, the developers anticipate some sort of medical use for the commercial space. It seems intuitive that the new building will have some connection to the medical center next door, though we wonder what kind of medical tenant will pay a premium for street frontage; it’s not like most medical offices rely on foot traffic. We wonder whether this space might end up pivoting away from medical, in favor of a more retail-type tenant.

The vast majority of this block is zoned for mixed-use commercial, but this property is zoned for single family homes, for whatever reason. This being the case, the project will need a blessing from the ZBA and the developers are seeking to make the project as palatable as possible for the surrounding neighbors. The dozen parking spots in the project will be joined by 35 more spots in the parking garage around the corner, providing more than 1:1 parking for this project. With a Broad Street Line station just a block away that seems excessive to us, but you’ve gotta do what you’ve gotta do when the underlying zoning isn’t on your side.

The RCO was on board with the project, so it seems likely that the ZBA will grant the required variances early next year. Before that can happen, the developers will have to present their project to the CDR committee. So it’s possible we’ll see a few design changes before construction starts, but we are feeling bullish that something will actually happen here after some stops and starts. Replacing the worn down vacant building with new apartments and medical offices will be good for everyone’s mental health, which seems quite fitting.